Television broadcasting technology has improved tremendously since its inception. Today, television signals are broadcasted on the airwaves, through cables, and via satellite. The number of stations accessible today has increased to hundreds of stations. To select a program to view, many viewers simply "channel surf" until they find a channel that has a desirable program. Channel surfing refers to the process of using the channel "+" or "-" key to sequentially view each channel. Although some viewers find channel surfing among hundreds of stations enjoyable, most viewers prefer a more direct method for selecting a program to view.
Some prior art television channel selection guides provide a television channel selection guide which displays a listing of the channels typically in numeric order and the titles of the programs broadcasted or to be broadcasted on the channels. The viewer or user of the system may then select the channel by entering in the channel number or selecting a program. The system responds by removing the guide displayed and tuning to the station selected and displaying the broadcast signals of the station.
In the current generation of broadcasting system technology, a viewer is provided with many options regarding programs that are available for broadcast. These options include, but are not limited to, channel surfing among program descriptions while watching a particular program on one channel. This option is typically accessed through a graphical user interface presented in one of two formats. In one format, the graphical user interface is a transparent electronic program guide that is superimposed over a broadcasted program. In a second format, the graphical user interface is an electronic program guide that is displayed along with a broadcasted program where the broadcasted program is displayed as reduced in size so that no portion of the electronic program guide covers the program. Both of these graphical user interfaces allow the user to watch one program while accessing program information for a number of other programs that are available for broadcast.
As the number of viewer options increases, so to does the need for a user-friendly system interface that accommodates all users by allowing for channel programming information to be presented in a variety of formats. Most television viewers have a limited number of favorite stations that they regularly watch. Consequently, the viewer is typically going to be most interested in the programming on these favorite stations. Thus, while prior art program guides allow the user to view one program while viewing program information for all other programs of a broadcast system, it would be advantageous to have a program guide that provides the option to view a representative sample of each of a number of programs available on a corresponding number of favorite channels.